Why We Don’t Let Coworkers Help Us, Even When We Need It

When colleagues display helpful and cooperative “citizenship behaviors,” research has shown, they tend to develop high-quality social connections, which can improve individual and team performance through enhanced coordination, communication, and shared understanding within organizations. But there’s an obstacle to reaping those benefits — social psychologists have also found that people often react negatively to being helped. So we recently conducted a series of studies (forthcoming in the Journal of Applied Psychology) to gain insight into how that dynamic plays out at work.

In a qualitative study, we asked 238 employees in a variety of industries to explain why they would or wouldn’t accept help from a coworker. From their responses, we identified five key reasons people avoid being helped: preferring to be self-reliant and complete their work on their own, wanting to protect their image, not wanting to feel obligated to return the favor, not trusting their coworkers’ motives, and believing that their coworkers are incompetent.

How pervasive are these attitudes? More so than you might think. When we asked more than 500 employees in a separate survey how much they agreed with various reasons for not seeking help, nearly two-thirds indicated that they preferred to finish their work without assistance from colleagues. Over half agreed that this allowed them to be seen as “high potential” employees. Almost 20% said that they normally declined offers of assistance so that they wouldn’t owe their coworkers favors. Nearly 10% said that their coworkers were “out for themselves,” and roughly 8% thought that their coworkers lacked the competence to help finish tasks.

As you can imagine, such views increase the risk of burnout. Some respondents were hesitant to accept help even when they felt they were drowning in work. In a follow-up study, we gave people a hypothetical scenario in which they were working on a task that would be extremely difficult to complete during normal work hours. Employees who held negative views about accepting help were more likely to put in extra hours to complete the task than to accept assistance.

Engagement and work quality can suffer, too. In another study, in which we analyzed 360-degree data, we found that people with negative views about accepting help at work were more likely to be dissatisfied with their jobs and to think about quitting. These employees also had lower levels of job performance, were less helpful themselves, were less willing to go the extra mile for their organization, and were less creative. So they weren’t just failing to realize the benefits of helping behaviors; they were incurring a host of negative outcomes, as well.

Even their assumptions about how others perceived them were misguided. We found that people with negative views about accepting help were seen lessfavorably by their supervisors. In contrast, those who embraced help were more likely to be rated by their boss as exhibiting “positive follower” qualities (meaning they were viewed as hardworking and productive team players).

Taken together, our studies suggest that employees who are unwilling to accept help when they need it may undermine their own performance and the effectiveness of their team or unit. In light of those potential costs, managers should directly address the negative beliefs that people are harboring. For instance, research shows that employees tend to look to their leaders to determine who is trustworthy and who isn’t. So, to build people’s trust in their coworkers’ motives and competence, managers can demonstrate their faith in those employees by giving them challenging assignments, ownership of certain decisions, direct access to sensitive information or valuable stakeholders, and so on. Further, since giving help and receiving it go hand in hand, managers should create an environment where assisting one another is encouraged and recognized. They can do this by calling attention to successful collaborations and explaining how they’ve contributed to the organization’s larger goals and mission. And they should show their own willingness to help and be helped, since employees are more likely to see the merits of citizenship behaviors when they observe their leaders engaging in such behaviors themselves.

Finally, it’s important not to send mixed messages. If employees who go it alone get ahead more quickly than those who give and receive support, people will pick up on that discrepancy — and they’ll go back to looking out for number one, to their detriment and the organization’s.